Maxing out inverter wattage?

[SKMT]

I have an old Freedom 10 1000w inverter. Couple questions:

1. I've ran appliances / power tools that are rated 10-20% over 1000 watts, but never popped a breaker/fuse. Does the inverter just give it 1000w and the appliance works with that (below max power)? Or is a 1000w inverter just actually capable of a couple hundreds watts over spec?

2. Dovetailing off question #1, I recently upped my solar to 1750w. It's wayyy more than I need on a sunny day. I have a 1000w 6gal water heater that takes about an hour of generator to get hot enough for a winter time shower. I'm thinking I might as well wire the water heater thru the inverter to make use of all the excess solar. My question is whether it's hard on an inverter to be run at max capacity non stop for an hour (on a daily basis)?

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by SKMT

I have an old Freedom 10 1000w inverter. Couple questions:



1. I've ran appliances / power tools that are rated 10-20% over 1000 watts, but never popped a breaker/fuse. Does the inverter just give it 1000w and the appliance works with that (below max power)? Or is a 1000w inverter just actually capable of a couple hundreds watts over spec?



2. Dovetailing off question #1, I recently upped my solar to 1750w. It's wayyy more than I need on a sunny day. I have a 1000w 6gal water heater that takes about an hour of generator to get hot enough for a winter time shower. I'm thinking I might as well wire the water heater thru the inverter to make use of all the excess solar. My question is whether it's hard on an inverter to be run at max capacity non stop for an hour (on a daily basis)?

Yes. Whatever you do you need a high quality invertor , rated 2X in my experience , you made need to up the fan cooling

Brands like mastervolt, Victron and so on produce high quality , expensive , high power invertors.

[Rapanui]

We have a 1600 W Sterling pure sine inverter, 360 Ahr AGMs and 480W solar and regularly use the inverter to heat water. Water heaters are pure resistive loads and as such very easy on inverters so with your excess solar you should have no problems heating water that way with the benefit of not pumping carbon into the air while doing so.

[secessus]

Originally Posted by Rapanui

pure resistive loads and as such very easy on inverters

And such loads run without issue on MSW. OP could pick up a quality 2000w MSW inverter for the fraction of the outlay for a PSW upgrade.

[Pete7]

Surely a 750w heater element is the cheaper route so the inverter isn't maxed out.

Pete

[SKMT]

Well totally mixed responses on whether 1000w load on a 1000w inverter would be hard on the inverter...

How about my batteries? I have about 1100ah of new lead acid. Would an hour of continuous 85amp draw daily be notably detrimental to their longevity? Would it make any difference if I ran water heater at night with no solar coming in versus day when I'd be pushing most or all of that 85amps from solar into batteries simultaneously?